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Interesting to think about where we'll be when this happens again in 2049. It's a difference of only 30 years. 30 years ago was 1989. Yet life today compared t

Interesting to think about where we'll be when this happens again in 2049. It's a difference of only 30 years. 30 years ago was 1989. Yet life today compared to then is simply alien - technology has impacted the way everyone and every thing exists. The first self-powered flight was in 1903. Man landed on the Moon just 66 years later. In one lifetime you went from being perpetually constrained to the surface to literally flying above the sky, transcending all known heights, and you wouldn't even have retired yet. SpaceX was started in 2002, a mere 17 years ago. It is now, on this very day, on the verge of delivering hardware that can send people to Mars. In 30 years from now, if the optimists are correct, we'll be living on the Moon and probably Mars. If the optimists are correct, we'll be able to take a shuttle from Mars to Mercury itself by the time this event happens again. The optimists are probably wrong. But it doesn't hurt to dream.

lisper 7y ago
I remember a world without the internet, without personal computers, without ATM machines. I am a member of the last generation (until the apocalypse) who will know what life was like without these things. Traveling was more of an adventure back then because you were pretty much cut off from home. Nowadays, being away is not so different from being at home. We may be living on the moon in 2049. Whether that represents a net improvement in the human condition is another matter altogether.
- kick 7y ago
  Why not just turn off your phone while traveling, or leave it at home?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I'm not sure it's so much about communicating back home; I don't really stay in close touch with friends/family when I'm traveling. (Business is a different matter. I can far better continue to work today as usual even if I'm on the other side of the planet than I could have in the next city a few decades ago.) It's more that apps (maps, airlines, tripadvisor, restaurant/hotel sites, etc.) have really transformed travel to many places in a huge number of ways over just about the past 10 years. I can't say I would really give that up very willingly. [Added: Though, if I'm being honest, I'd admit that expectations about being able to be reached and to reach others have shifted. When cell phones started to become popular, I sort of disliked how a lot of people increasingly assumed you could always call for help in an emergency. Today, if I were going to be in a remote area for an extended period by myself, I'd probably find it hard to justify not having a satellite messaging system.]
- mistahenry 7y ago
  I moved to Germany from the US, and I’d say that traveling is still very different from being at home in 2019. With regard to connection reducing the adventure when traveling, how connected you are at any time can be a choice. Sure, back in the day you had no life line. But to me it’s a bit like free solo climbing (no ropes) vs lead climbing. Free solo is max adventure but the consequences are higher. It’s your choice in what you want the challenge to be. But if you really only care about challenging yourself on the climb itself and you don’t fall in either, was there really much of a difference? Having the safety net let’s you push harder and avoid being too conservative
  - xvector 7y ago
    I don’t think the parent comment was saying that having a safety net is bad, just that it is different. And having a safety net definitely changes the dynamic of travel. I can’t imagine not having my phone with me, especially on a journey. And that’s not bad. I think we have collectively, unwittingly entered a transhuman state. Our phones are as much a part of us as anything else.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      For me, and maybe it's because I did so much travel pre-smartphone and then pre-international data, it's not so much about the lifeline/safety net. It's more about the ready availability of information--which is more or less important (and available online) depending upon where you are. Trekking in Nepal I'm guessing things aren't as different from 20 years ago as they would be in a random Asian capital where I find having a smartphone makes getting around easier/better compared to even 5 years ago.
  - air7 7y ago
    While you are not wrong, there is a big difference between choosing not to use something, vs not having the option to. You can get much more peace of mind in the latter, even thought the situation is the same.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Well I had this kind of travel (no phone, no credit card just some cash and 1200 page lonely planet india book) in 2008 and 2010. Heck, 2 years ago I could still have the same when hiking through everest region, if i didn't pay for their wifi internet. Its still out there if you accept taking a modest comfort hit. Just one tip - bring more cash than you expect, even with reserve
  - lisper 7y ago
    Sure, it's still possible to get away from civilization, but those opportunities are becoming more and more rare (and require more and more acceptance of physical discomfort and risks to your health). But before the internet, all travel was like that. If you left home you had no choice but to leave access to some important support structures in your life behind, and that gave travel a fundamentally different character than it has today. Living on the moon may similarly lose a lot of its charm once it becomes routine.
- krageon 7y ago
  While I am not so old I remember a time before dialup, I definitely remember travelling without basically all the things that you mention here. To me, the more things have been said to change, the more they are exactly the same. Consider that perhaps a perceived difference lies mostly in the eye of the beholder.
  - lisper 7y ago
    No, things really are different now. Travel is much easier. I think it's arguable whether or not that makes it better. It certainly seems better in the moment if you don't have to worry about, say, running out of cash or finding a place to sleep. But in hindsight, a big part of the benefit of travel in the old days (IMHO) was that it forced you to get out of your comfort zone and face challenges that you otherwise would not have faced. For me, travel is (or at least should be) about more than just getting a selfie in front of the Eiffel tower. Bringing this back to the OP, we may discover that a big part of the charm of living on the moon is in our imagination. Once we actually making living on the moon routine we'll discover that it's actually not such a nice place to be. It's dusty. It's all the same shade of grey. The weather sucks. The best we can hope for is to turn the moon into another Las Vegas or Dubai, which are also dusty drab places with crappy weather. But once we do that, what will we really have gained? You might as well just stay in Vegas. It's cheaper.
- lowercased 7y ago
  I remember black and white television, and CRT TV screens which shrunk and faded to little dots when shut off. I remember having one telephone in the house. I remember not having a computer in the house, then getting one (Sinclair ZX81). I too remember life before ATMs. In all these cases, I was a kid - these memories are all from maybe the age of 3-4 through early teens. I never navigated adult life without understanding computers, although early adult life was without cell phone, without internet access, without email, etc. What I do remember is watching people adjust to these things. They were a novelty, and in many cases, became expected/required for 'modern life'. I was an early adopter, so even watching people my own age was interesting because I could see people struggle with some tech or even concepts, and hearing peoples' descriptions of technology changes has been interesting (often based on rumor or just wrong). re: being 'away' from home - in elementary school, we had a multi-week project to "plan a trip" - learning about maps, travel distance, budgeting for hotels, food, etc. We had to write away to AAA for maps and info, then plan out where we'd drive, where gas stations were, etc. That was a class project. Today, you literally get in a car and talk to a device (or the car) and say "give me directions to ...." some place halfway across the country, and you'll get accurate turn by turn directions, with live traffic updates, and you can find food/gas/shelter all while driving. Insane to think of those changes, but it's just 'normal' to my younger family.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    You definitely tended to plan trips, and activities generally, more. It's probably one reason I tend to be more structured around travel than a lot of people I know. That said, some of it is just doing more self-service planning. We used to use travel agents more--I still use specialized services for some things. And we'd just ask the hotel concierge to arrange a dinner rather than go on Trip Advisor and book a reservation online.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    I remember all of these things, too. I also remember trying to explain to my great grandmother, who was born in the 19th century, how it was that my brother and I were able to control what was happening on the TV screen. And that's all I'm going to reflect on for now, lest I become tempted to burn a week's worth of evenings reading Ray Kurzweil.
- asudosandwich 7y ago
  I remember being bored. Fondly in hindsight.
  - Diederich 7y ago
    Before the Internet, I always had a nice backlog of books to read. And I also remember those times quite fondly.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    Maybe it's worth it to do a experiment, by leaving a day and doing precisely nothing -- not allowing phone/internet at all. I'm not sure if I'll think fondly of that years down the line but I may be wrong.
- matwood 7y ago
  On my first trip to Europe I drove from Paris to Nice, stopping over in Epinal. We didn't have a GPS device and our phones didn't work. We did have some printed out directions from MapQuest IIRC. We still talk about that adventure today, "after the 13th roundabout take the second exit". Was this 12 or 13?
  - lisper 7y ago
    > directions from MapQuest Heh. When I was traveling in Europe in the mid-80s we had to use actual maps. :-)
    - matwood 7y ago
      Great point. We also had a map, which ended up being crucial. Contrast my experience with those of younger friends I have traveled with who will spent an hour on TripAdvisor prior to walking inside a restaurant :(
- nogridbag 7y ago
  Traveling with a smartphone can also have the opposite effect. It makes us overconfident. On my honeymoon a few years back, we used Google Maps to take a scenic route [1]. Google Maps gave an ETA of 2 hours and a sign said it required a 4x4 vehicle but wasn't too worried because I had a Jeep 4x4 rental car. Long story short - it took 5.5 hours, required rock climbing and driving through mud pits deeper than the vehicle all without cell service and no humans in sight. [1] https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-road.html https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-r...
galago 7y ago
Prediction: When we watch the transit of Earth from Mars, it will be remotely--there just isn't much advantage to humans physically living on Mars. We can see/understand what's going on, without pointless expense, tragedies, and indignities that would go with human presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars
- hoseja 7y ago
  Depends on whether one's priorities lie in being comfortable or maximizing the chance of surviving as a species.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  We can't even repair shit on the ISS with robots. I don't rate our chances to do arbitrary repair work.
- excalibur 7y ago
  Looks like the next one is in 2084. Assuming humans are still around, we should at least have put a few on Mars by then, but establishing an enduring colony is a much harder problem than sending someone for a Kodak moment.
pushpop 7y ago
It may happen, certainly will happen eventually, but every generation for the last 60 years has said the same (eg Space 1999, 2001 Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, etc) and as we inch ever closer we realise we are even further away than we first estimated. I guess it’s a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. That all said, the advent of the the web and “smart” devices have changed the world more significantly and in a shorter space of time than any other technological leap in human history. It’s been exciting working through that revolution.
- Teknoman117 7y ago
  I almost forgot about space 1999.
innocenat 7y ago
The next transit is in 2032 though. The next transit that will be visible from the US will be in 2049. 13 years is long, but it's not as long as 30 years you specified.
earthboundkid 7y ago
In the 30 years between 1969 and 1999, manned space travel didn't really make any progress. Technological progress generally follows an S shaped curve. It's only interesting in the neck. Computers have already leveled off in terms of Moore's Law.
makerofspoons 7y ago
30 years from now we could be looking back at 2019 fondly. By 2048 it is estimated at the current consumption levels salt water fish could be nearly extinct, for example. We could also be dealing with twenty days of lethal heat per year and one billion people displaced due to climate change.

lisper 7y ago

I remember a world without the internet, without personal computers, without ATM machines. I am a member of the last generation (until the apocalypse) who will know what life was like without these things. Traveling was more of an adventure back then because you were pretty much cut off from home. Nowadays, being away is not so different from being at home. We may be living on the moon in 2049. Whether that represents a net improvement in the human condition is another matter altogether.

kick 7y ago
Why not just turn off your phone while traveling, or leave it at home?
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'm not sure it's so much about communicating back home; I don't really stay in close touch with friends/family when I'm traveling. (Business is a different matter. I can far better continue to work today as usual even if I'm on the other side of the planet than I could have in the next city a few decades ago.) It's more that apps (maps, airlines, tripadvisor, restaurant/hotel sites, etc.) have really transformed travel to many places in a huge number of ways over just about the past 10 years. I can't say I would really give that up very willingly. [Added: Though, if I'm being honest, I'd admit that expectations about being able to be reached and to reach others have shifted. When cell phones started to become popular, I sort of disliked how a lot of people increasingly assumed you could always call for help in an emergency. Today, if I were going to be in a remote area for an extended period by myself, I'd probably find it hard to justify not having a satellite messaging system.]
mistahenry 7y ago
I moved to Germany from the US, and I’d say that traveling is still very different from being at home in 2019. With regard to connection reducing the adventure when traveling, how connected you are at any time can be a choice. Sure, back in the day you had no life line. But to me it’s a bit like free solo climbing (no ropes) vs lead climbing. Free solo is max adventure but the consequences are higher. It’s your choice in what you want the challenge to be. But if you really only care about challenging yourself on the climb itself and you don’t fall in either, was there really much of a difference? Having the safety net let’s you push harder and avoid being too conservative
- xvector 7y ago
  I don’t think the parent comment was saying that having a safety net is bad, just that it is different. And having a safety net definitely changes the dynamic of travel. I can’t imagine not having my phone with me, especially on a journey. And that’s not bad. I think we have collectively, unwittingly entered a transhuman state. Our phones are as much a part of us as anything else.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    For me, and maybe it's because I did so much travel pre-smartphone and then pre-international data, it's not so much about the lifeline/safety net. It's more about the ready availability of information--which is more or less important (and available online) depending upon where you are. Trekking in Nepal I'm guessing things aren't as different from 20 years ago as they would be in a random Asian capital where I find having a smartphone makes getting around easier/better compared to even 5 years ago.
- air7 7y ago
  While you are not wrong, there is a big difference between choosing not to use something, vs not having the option to. You can get much more peace of mind in the latter, even thought the situation is the same.
saiya-jin 7y ago
Well I had this kind of travel (no phone, no credit card just some cash and 1200 page lonely planet india book) in 2008 and 2010. Heck, 2 years ago I could still have the same when hiking through everest region, if i didn't pay for their wifi internet. Its still out there if you accept taking a modest comfort hit. Just one tip - bring more cash than you expect, even with reserve
- lisper 7y ago
  Sure, it's still possible to get away from civilization, but those opportunities are becoming more and more rare (and require more and more acceptance of physical discomfort and risks to your health). But before the internet, all travel was like that. If you left home you had no choice but to leave access to some important support structures in your life behind, and that gave travel a fundamentally different character than it has today. Living on the moon may similarly lose a lot of its charm once it becomes routine.
krageon 7y ago
While I am not so old I remember a time before dialup, I definitely remember travelling without basically all the things that you mention here. To me, the more things have been said to change, the more they are exactly the same. Consider that perhaps a perceived difference lies mostly in the eye of the beholder.
- lisper 7y ago
  No, things really are different now. Travel is much easier. I think it's arguable whether or not that makes it better. It certainly seems better in the moment if you don't have to worry about, say, running out of cash or finding a place to sleep. But in hindsight, a big part of the benefit of travel in the old days (IMHO) was that it forced you to get out of your comfort zone and face challenges that you otherwise would not have faced. For me, travel is (or at least should be) about more than just getting a selfie in front of the Eiffel tower. Bringing this back to the OP, we may discover that a big part of the charm of living on the moon is in our imagination. Once we actually making living on the moon routine we'll discover that it's actually not such a nice place to be. It's dusty. It's all the same shade of grey. The weather sucks. The best we can hope for is to turn the moon into another Las Vegas or Dubai, which are also dusty drab places with crappy weather. But once we do that, what will we really have gained? You might as well just stay in Vegas. It's cheaper.
lowercased 7y ago
I remember black and white television, and CRT TV screens which shrunk and faded to little dots when shut off. I remember having one telephone in the house. I remember not having a computer in the house, then getting one (Sinclair ZX81). I too remember life before ATMs. In all these cases, I was a kid - these memories are all from maybe the age of 3-4 through early teens. I never navigated adult life without understanding computers, although early adult life was without cell phone, without internet access, without email, etc. What I do remember is watching people adjust to these things. They were a novelty, and in many cases, became expected/required for 'modern life'. I was an early adopter, so even watching people my own age was interesting because I could see people struggle with some tech or even concepts, and hearing peoples' descriptions of technology changes has been interesting (often based on rumor or just wrong). re: being 'away' from home - in elementary school, we had a multi-week project to "plan a trip" - learning about maps, travel distance, budgeting for hotels, food, etc. We had to write away to AAA for maps and info, then plan out where we'd drive, where gas stations were, etc. That was a class project. Today, you literally get in a car and talk to a device (or the car) and say "give me directions to ...." some place halfway across the country, and you'll get accurate turn by turn directions, with live traffic updates, and you can find food/gas/shelter all while driving. Insane to think of those changes, but it's just 'normal' to my younger family.
- ghaff 7y ago
  You definitely tended to plan trips, and activities generally, more. It's probably one reason I tend to be more structured around travel than a lot of people I know. That said, some of it is just doing more self-service planning. We used to use travel agents more--I still use specialized services for some things. And we'd just ask the hotel concierge to arrange a dinner rather than go on Trip Advisor and book a reservation online.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  I remember all of these things, too. I also remember trying to explain to my great grandmother, who was born in the 19th century, how it was that my brother and I were able to control what was happening on the TV screen. And that's all I'm going to reflect on for now, lest I become tempted to burn a week's worth of evenings reading Ray Kurzweil.
asudosandwich 7y ago
I remember being bored. Fondly in hindsight.
- Diederich 7y ago
  Before the Internet, I always had a nice backlog of books to read. And I also remember those times quite fondly.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Maybe it's worth it to do a experiment, by leaving a day and doing precisely nothing -- not allowing phone/internet at all. I'm not sure if I'll think fondly of that years down the line but I may be wrong.
matwood 7y ago
On my first trip to Europe I drove from Paris to Nice, stopping over in Epinal. We didn't have a GPS device and our phones didn't work. We did have some printed out directions from MapQuest IIRC. We still talk about that adventure today, "after the 13th roundabout take the second exit". Was this 12 or 13?
- lisper 7y ago
  > directions from MapQuest Heh. When I was traveling in Europe in the mid-80s we had to use actual maps. :-)
  - matwood 7y ago
    Great point. We also had a map, which ended up being crucial. Contrast my experience with those of younger friends I have traveled with who will spent an hour on TripAdvisor prior to walking inside a restaurant :(
nogridbag 7y ago
Traveling with a smartphone can also have the opposite effect. It makes us overconfident. On my honeymoon a few years back, we used Google Maps to take a scenic route [1]. Google Maps gave an ETA of 2 hours and a sign said it required a 4x4 vehicle but wasn't too worried because I had a Jeep 4x4 rental car. Long story short - it took 5.5 hours, required rock climbing and driving through mud pits deeper than the vehicle all without cell service and no humans in sight. [1] https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-road.html https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-r...

galago 7y ago

Prediction: When we watch the transit of Earth from Mars, it will be remotely--there just isn't much advantage to humans physically living on Mars. We can see/understand what's going on, without pointless expense, tragedies, and indignities that would go with human presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars

hoseja 7y ago
Depends on whether one's priorities lie in being comfortable or maximizing the chance of surviving as a species.
scarejunba 7y ago
We can't even repair shit on the ISS with robots. I don't rate our chances to do arbitrary repair work.
excalibur 7y ago
Looks like the next one is in 2084. Assuming humans are still around, we should at least have put a few on Mars by then, but establishing an enduring colony is a much harder problem than sending someone for a Kodak moment.

pushpop 7y ago

It may happen, certainly will happen eventually, but every generation for the last 60 years has said the same (eg Space 1999, 2001 Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, etc) and as we inch ever closer we realise we are even further away than we first estimated. I guess it’s a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. That all said, the advent of the the web and “smart” devices have changed the world more significantly and in a shorter space of time than any other technological leap in human history. It’s been exciting working through that revolution.

Teknoman117 7y ago
I almost forgot about space 1999.

innocenat 7y ago

The next transit is in 2032 though. The next transit that will be visible from the US will be in 2049. 13 years is long, but it's not as long as 30 years you specified.

earthboundkid 7y ago

In the 30 years between 1969 and 1999, manned space travel didn't really make any progress. Technological progress generally follows an S shaped curve. It's only interesting in the neck. Computers have already leveled off in terms of Moore's Law.

makerofspoons 7y ago

30 years from now we could be looking back at 2019 fondly. By 2048 it is estimated at the current consumption levels salt water fish could be nearly extinct, for example. We could also be dealing with twenty days of lethal heat per year and one billion people displaced due to climate change.